City to buy bridge

A fu­ture pedes­trian foot­bridge in Man­durah’s north will con­nect the grow­ing com­mu­ni­ties of Madora Bay and Lake­lands, and pro­vide safe ac­cess for school stu­dents and res­i­dents in the area.

Dur­ing a “late and ur­gent” item put to coun­cil last Tues­day, coun­cil­lors agreed to chief ex­ec­u­tive Mark New­man ne­go­ti­at­ing with Main Roads WA to ac­quire a re­cy­cled con­crete and steel foot­bridge cost­ing $150,000.

The foot­bridge has be­come avail­able to the City as part of Tonkin High­way rede­vel­op­ment works for the North­Link WA project.

A state­ment from the City of Man­durah said: “The City has iden­ti­fied a cost-ef­fec­tive op­por­tu­nity to pur­chase the foot­bridge, recog­nis­ing a fu­ture com­mu­nity need for a pedes­trian bridge in the area so res­i­dents can safely and con­ve­niently ac­cess the shop­ping cen­tre, li­brary, schools and other ameni­ties with­out cross­ing busy Man­durah Road.

Ne­go­ti­a­tions are con­tin­u­ing with Main Roads WA to pur­chase the foot­bridge, which has an es­ti­mated use­ful life of 50 years.

Ac­cord­ing to the City, the over­all cost of the project to in­stall the foot­bridge is sig­nif­i­cantly less than de­vel­op­ing from new. The foot­bridge would be sit­u­ated over Man­durah Road, near Banksi­adale Gate, and a busi­ness case and con­sul­ta­tion would be car­ried out as part of the project plan­ning.